American Sniper take aim at weight of war

Published
12:00 am CST, Saturday, January 31, 2015

Jesus was a pacifist. So the church has struggled with war for centuries. The movie American Sniper has become a point of contention. It seems to permit more than a bit of a projection for those who supported the war in Iraq and those who opposed it. We read a lot into it based on our preconceptions about the war. Second, it continues the issue of looking at private and public life. Third, it continues our difficulty with the post modern blurring of fact and fiction. I frankly don’t grasp those who expect a movie to be a documentary.

This is perhaps the best-made film by a director in his 80s. Some of the scenes are shown from Kyle’s point of view, and that tends to build identification with his character. One feels the deadly strain of close quarter’s urban combat. Lots of cross cutting and editing build momentum in the combat scenes, and the scenes move at a crawl when he is struggling to make a decision to fire. It highlights the limitations placed on troops in a situation such as Iraq with no clear objectives or tactics for one to declare victory. In other words, the film shows savagery on all sides.

I frankly don’t grasp the complaint that movies should be documentaries. It seems we now go into the theater with the expectation that our opinions need to be confirmed to make them affirmed. Some think it glamorizes war with its sniper hero. For me, the movie depicts the terrors and horrors of war and its aftermath. Rita Nakashima Brock runs a program in Texas dealing with the “moral injury” of those in war who continue to find their ethical compass disoriented. Kyle is shown making decisions about killing a woman or a child if they pose a threat to American soldiers. We want a match between public and private behavior and motives. That is not the case frequently. Pure heroes are rare beings. At any rate, we enter some murky waters trying to isolate his actual viewpoints and those presented in the movie. It may be based on his book, but any movie takes dramatic license to present its story. For that mater, maybe many new outlets should place the statement, “based on actual events” before their broadcasts.

It renewed my fury at those who seem so willing to send young men and women to die but want to pinch pennies for their acclimation to civilian life upon returning. Part of this is our steadfast refusal to see mental and emotional injury fully. We continue to want to blame the victim for lack of will power or strength. When Kyle’s therapist tells him that the VA had lots of people who needed saving, he pointed to a huge number of people wounded in body, mind, and spirit. The very capacity to \wall off emotions in wartime can come back to haunt the returning vet. Yet, the movie shows the obvious pain and despair of many of the returning vets, including the seeming super-human Kyle himself. The all-volunteer force has tamped down protest, as the military does not represent a fuller cross-section of the country.

I thought it showed the immense strain that deployments, especially multiple deployments, take on a family. The stress of joining one’s comrades in arms collides with the guilt of leaving family. The family resents the deployment, even as they honor the obvious risk and sacrifice made in our relatively new volunteer armed forces. It is a fearsome existence to dread every phone call, every knock on the door.

At their best, movies open eyes to new perspectives. American Sniper takes aim at the welter of responses to the long war in Iraq and the longer battle for restoring the lives of those who have borne the weight of war.